Trump says 'only one thing will work' to solve the North Korea crisis

Business Insider

9 d ago

US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that "only one thing will work" to solve the North Korea crisis, although he did not explicitly specify what that would be.

"Presidents and their administrations have been talking to North Korea for 25 years, agreements made and massive amounts of money paid......" the president .

"...hasn't worked, agreements violated before the ink was dry, makings fools of U.S. negotiators. Sorry, but only one thing will work!" he continued in a .

It's unclear whether Trump was referring to the nuclear option when he said "only one thing will work." A senior administration official told Business Insider that the White House had "nothing else to add" to the president's tweets, and the State Department did not return a request for comment.

North Korea rapidly escalated its nuclear posturing over the summer. The rogue nation over Japan a few weeks ago for the second time in two months.

Last weekend, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson during a visit to China that the US conflict with North Korea is "overheated" and that the first priority was to calm things down. He said that the US has a direct line of communication open with Pyongyang over North Korea's nuclear tests, adding: "We're not in a dark situation, a blackout."

Trump diverged from the US State Department and said Tillerson was "wasting his time" opening up talks with the North Korean regime. The president that being nice to Kim "hasn't worked in 25 years, why would it work now? Clinton failed, Bush failed, and Obama failed. I won't fail."

Trump against the regime when the United Nations General Assembly convened on September 23, saying that "rocket man" Kim Jong Un was on a "suicide mission," and that if he did not back down, the US would "have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea."

Kim by saying he would "surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire." North Korea's foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, that on the US mainland "all the more inevitable."

Ri also said that on North Korea through tweets he posted after the UN meeting and that the country could shoot down US strategic bombers even if they were not in its airspace,.

Speaking to reporters in New York in September, Ri pointed to one of Trump's tweets that said Ri and Kim Jong Un "" if the rogue nation continued its nuclear provocations as constituting a declaration of war.

The White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, rejected North Korea's claim later that day."We've not declared war on North Korea," Sanders told reporters during the White House daily briefing. "Frankly, the suggestion of that is absurd."

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SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea has restarted operations at the Kaesong industrial zone, state-run web sites said on Friday, after the joint venture with South Korea was suspended last year amid disagreement over the North's nuclear and missile programs.

The South ended more than a decade of cooperation at the factory park on the North Korean side of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) after the North launched a rocket that put an object into orbit, closing the last remaining window of interaction between the two sides, still technically at war.

At the time, South Korea said it would no longer allow funds paid for Kaesong to be used in the North's missile and nuclear programs. Since then, a South Korean official has said there is no evidence that North Korea diverted wages paid to its workers by South Korean companies operating in the park to its weapons programs.

"They do not even see our proud workers laboring vigorously working in the Kaesong industrial complex," North Korea's propaganda web site Meari (arirangmeari.com) said in a post dated Friday.

Another propaganda web site, Uriminzokkiri, said "it is nobody's business what we do in an industrial complex where our nation's sovereignty is exercised".

An official at South Korea's Ministry of Unification said that North Korea must not violate South Korean firms' property rights within the complex, wire service Yonhap reported.

The Ministry of Unification could not be immediately reached for comment.

Thomson Reuters

Reclusive North Korea and the rich, democratic South are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

In recent weeks, North Korea has launched two missiles over Japan and conducted its sixth nuclear test, and may be fast advancing toward its goal of developing a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said last weekend that Washington was directly communicating with Pyongyang on its nuclear and missile programs but that Pyongyang had shown no interest in dialogue.

U.S. President Donald Trump later dismissed any prospect of talks with North Korea as a waste of time.

NOW WATCH: North Korea exports $2.83 billion worth of goods — here's where it all goes

U.S. lawmakers are dialing up pressure on the Trump administration to expand sanctions aimed at North Korea to dozens of businesses described by U.S. and United Nations officials as components of North Korea’s illicit financing networks.

Late-night hosts on Thursday addressed potential legislation to ban “bump stocks” in the wake of the mass shooting in Las Vegas, plus congressman Tim Murphy’s scandal and subsequent resignation, and the infighting within the Trump administration.

Late Saturday afternoon, Donald Trump tweeted a cryptic statement that seemed to threaten war with North Korea.

Presidents and their administrations have been talking to North Korea for 25 years, agreements made and massive amounts of money paid......

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2017

...hasn't worked, agreements violated before the ink was dry, makings fools of U.S. negotiators. Sorry, but only one thing will work!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2017

"Presidents and their administrations have been talking to North Korea for 25 years, agreements made and massive amounts of money paid...... hasn't worked, agreements violated before the ink was dry, makings fools of U.S. negotiators. Sorry, but only one thing will work!" Trump tweeted. Read more...

President Trump posted a pair of messages on Twitter Saturday afternoon, saying that "only one thing will work" when dealing with North Korea, but declined to specify or elaborate on what that thing was.

SEOUL (Reuters) - The promotion of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's 28-year-old sister to the country's top decision-making body is a sign he is strengthening his position by drawing his most important people closer to the center of power, experts and officials say.

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